The Light Over London(47)

“I just want to know something. Anything. It’s important to me because you’re important to me,” Cara said.

Gran closed her eyes and let out a defeated huff. “Do you still have the safe from your parents’ house?”

Cara nodded. “It’s in storage in London. Why?”

“Inside there’s a box. You might not have thought anything of it when you were going through their things, but it’s my most valuable possession. I gave it to your parents to keep safe during the move, and since they died, I haven’t had the heart to ask for it.”

Cara could certainly understand that.

“The box contains the photographs your mother found. Bring that, and I can show them to you, although I’m sure you’ll find them as unextraordinary as they actually are.” Gran looked up all of a sudden, as though remembering that Liam was there with them. “And you go with her. I don’t want her doing this alone.”

“Gran, Liam has things to do and—”

“I’d be honored to accompany your granddaughter,” he said.

Gran tilted her head back a little as though she was trying to hold back the tears that shimmered in her eyes. “You should be.”

Cara leaned over to kiss Gran on the cheek, trying not to regret her pushiness. “We’ll leave you to your date. Love you to the moon . . .”

“And back, dearest,” said Gran. “Thank you again for the tea cakes.”

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Warren,” said Liam, setting his drink down on a coaster.

“Call me Iris.”

“I will,” he said.

“And be smart and ask my granddaughter out before she gets it into her head to start dating again. Then she’ll be beating men off with a stick.”

Cara practically shoved Liam into the hall and stuck her head back in through the open door. “You do realize you’re becoming one of those embarrassing grannies people whine about, don’t you?”

Gran’s laughter echoed down the hallway all the way to the lift. When they were safely inside, Cara snuck a glance at Liam and said, “Well, now you’ve met Gran.”

He gave a single laugh. And then another. And then, all at once, he was doubled over at the waist, laughing so hard that he had to take his glasses off and swipe at his eyes. “I like her. Very, very much.”

Cara sighed. “Everyone does. When we were at uni, Nicole used to go round to Gran’s for tea when I was working. The two of them together are a menace.” She paused. “You really don’t have to come to the storage locker with me.”

“I don’t think Iris would ever forgive me if I didn’t go.”

The doors dinged. He offered her his arm, and she took it.

“It’s just that she worries. After the divorce, it seemed only logical to store my things there because I was already renting the space,” she said.

And there her things had stayed, an archive of her parents’ deaths and her failure of a marriage. Every piece of furniture that had stood in her home in Chiswick carried the weight of memories. She could recall sweetly tender moments and painful fights had on the sitting room sofa. The kitchen table had a gouge mark in the finish where Simon had slammed down a bottle after she told him she’d been to see her solicitor. To go back and see all of those things again . . . Well, she wasn’t entirely sure how it would make her feel, and she’d worked so hard to put him behind her.

Liam tugged at his arm so that she was drawn in a little closer as they walked. “I want to help. What are you doing on Saturday?”

“Working,” she said, pulling a face, thinking of the stack of invoices and backlogged shipping she was still slogging through since the Old Vicarage clear-out had taken so much longer than expected.

“Sunday?” he asked.

“I’m free.”

“Then it’s a diary-inspection field trip,” he said, as they finally reached their cars. “It seems silly that we brought two cars here. I’ll drive on Sunday if you like.”

“Okay.”

“Well, I should go take my maniac of a dog out for a walk,” he said, taking a step back.

“Then I’ll see you around soon.”

He nodded and stuffed his hands into his pockets as she climbed into her car. She stuck her key in the ignition but sat and watched as he drove away. It wasn’t until his car disappeared from sight that she realized they’d walked all the way from Gran’s flat to their cars, arm in arm, and it hadn’t bothered her one bit.

4 August 1941

Three letters, and one of them is so exciting I’m almost shaking! But I’ll start with Kate first because it’s been an age since I’ve heard from her.

28 July 1941

Darling Louise,

I’ve made it to Cairo. (That should make it through the censors because it’s no great secret that the army is here.) Do you remember how I’d thought Greece would be all Mediterranean glamour and was so disappointed when it was nothing but army camps and hours of work? My predictions about Cairo were more accurate. I’ve never been hotter in my entire life. The sun rises and just sits there in the sky, baking all of us. If I stay out for even a moment, my nose goes bright red. It’s horrible.

There’s no NAAFI here, but in the evenings the boys transform the canteen. Some nights it’s a cinema. Others it’s a dance hall. One sergeant spent some time visiting family in Kansas City before enlisting last year, and he’s mad to teach us all how to jitterbug. It’s great fun, and I’m not half-bad at it.